It’s been a couple of weeks since I posted, and those have felt full. Not because there’s been a whole lot of events, or big stuff going on, just… a good sort of fullness, fulfillment maybe, the continuing glow from Wep Ronpet. I was going to write a whole religious post about how I got where I am and where that is, but… nah. It’s enough to say I have had a bit more, let’s say, illumination recently and am really feeling the love.
Call & Response (the name of the next album) is moving along. Of course the fact that I started it already half finished helps. 😉 So far, I have created my answers to a cat, a tree, and an antique (though not ancient) alien; there’s still a robot and an entire civilization yet to reply to.
I’ve been keeping up with reading, though not posting about it here. To catch up after Free Play:
Sarah Rees Brennan, Long Live Evil: an isekai story where a dying young woman gets the chance to take over the life of a villainess in a cheesy fantasy story. There’s a little bit of mood whiplash going on but for the most part, it’s a silly, fun story about… consequences really. And style.
Carlo Rovelli, Seven Brief Lessons on Physics: they really are brief. Honestly this was more of a review for me, since Rovelli has already covered this stuff in other works I’ve read. But it’s well-written and well-presented, and might be a good read for people who are curious about the state of our knowledge of the universe.
The Omni Book of Computers and Robots: honestly I only read this one because it was a gift. It’s a book from the days of the Apple ][ and TRS-80 — before the IBM PC or the Space Shuttle. A combination of futurism and reports on R&D, it was kind of amusing to see what the predictions and excitement were all about at the time. They wildly overestimated robots, lasers, space travel and biochips, wildly underestimated graphics, and had no clue how huge of a thing the internet and wireless communication would be (this was in the days before ARPANET even connected universities). The AI predictions were actually not bad, though the attitudes were super naive. The bit on telepresence was all “people want to control robot bodies!” and what we got was Zoom. There was even a chapter on synthesizers, which made it pretty clear that the author didn’t know much about it and nobody knew an explosion in digital audio was coming soon.
Amal El-Mohtar, The River Has Roots: a delightful fairytale/fantasy novel based on a couple of old folk songs, with some very clever wordplay. Easily in the top tier of the fiction I’ve read in 2026.
E. B. Asher, This Will Be Interesting: a comedic fantasy where a time travel spell rescues a beloved hero from his death 10 years ago. Which means dealing with the shock of everyone he knows being older, social changes, romantic complications and people who want him dead (again). Fun, but TRHR was a hard act to follow.
Isabel Wilkerson, Caste: The Origins of our Discontents: to say this is a book “about racism” doesn’t quite do it justice. It very strongly convinces the reader that there has been a two-tier caste system in America since before it became the USA, and that a great deal of our present-day political nastiness is in the service of preserving that system. (And this was written before T****’s second administration which has been so much worse than the first — there’s an afterword about the Jan 6 insurrection.) It compares the US, India and Nazi Germany…. and it doesn’t make the US look good In fact the Nazis studied American law and Americans’ writings on eugenics and thought some aspects of it went too far. It’s a powerful book, which made this white person angrier at white people than I have ever been before. But it explains a lot about the current wave of fascism (may it be the last).
Megan Falley & Andrea Gibson, How Poetry Can Change Your Heart: this is mostly a book about poetry, but it’s also a book of poetry since there are some pretty wonderful examples. I’d mentioned my recent attempts at poetry and was thinking maybe this is a direction I’d like to look in (*), and then someone mentioned Gibson in the context of honoring a transcestor (Gibson was a nonbinary activist as well as a poet and spoken-word artist; Falley was their partner). So I read this, loved it and have ordered a couple of their poetry collections.
Jessie Sylva, How to Lose a Goblin in Ten Days: a cozy fantasy about a halfling who inherits her infamous grandma’s old cottage, only to find that a goblin has already moved in. They decide to compete over who stays, and end up falling in love and overcoming prejudices. While there are other cozy fantasy/SF books I’d rate higher, I enjoyed this one too.
Carlo Rovelli, White Holes: not quite as short as Brief Lessons but not long either, it goes into the spacetime-bending and mind-blowing implications of the collision between relativity and quantum mechanics inside a black hole. …or a white hole. There’s no math to frighten away the casually curious, but it’s still a lot of unintuitive weirdness to wrap one’s head around. And, at least according to loop quantum gravity and a couple of scientists’ intuition about what it means, a lot of modern physicists don’t even get it right. I might not understand everything here (putting it mildly) but this book definitely nails the “cultivate wonder” goal I had for this year’s reading!
I think next I’m going to read Neal Stephenson’s Polostan — which isn’t about Poland but rather the sport on horseback, but was ranked very highly in a couple of forum posts. I still have a few more of the used hardcover books I ordered in January, plus a new pile of them on the way besides the poetry. Keeping my brain fed. 🙂
(*) bringing this back to religion briefly, my primary deity gave me an assignment to write a joyful little greeting song, and this was also on my mind. Poetry and song obviously have some different needs but they share a lot in common. FWIW, I’ve got a “final” version now that’s mostly in English with some ancient Egyptian terms where it made the most sense for the meaning/feel and rhythm, but I’m planning to consult an Egyptologist friend to see how a fully Egyptian version would come out.